Sart lor Lang Maternel (draf)

Studies in favour of using the mother tongue

Worldwide, endless studies have shown that the mother tongue is the finest tool for use in schools. This means the medium must be the child’s natural language. In a recent speech, Dr. Arnaud Carpooran ¹⁶, University of Mauritius linguist, gave an excellent outline of the importance of developing one’s general language proficiency in one’s own tongue first and foremost.

Recently the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) was commissioned by the African Union to do a huge study on the language issue in education in Africa ¹⁷. The results, though not public yet have been circulated to some of our members, and they show clearly that the mother tongue must be used as medium for at the very least the first six years of school. The longer the mother tongue remains the medium, the better the results. It is also clear that the ability to master English and French is better, the longer the mother tongue is used. We will come back to this.

The longitudinal studies in the USA by David Ramirez, between 1983 and 1991 in California, Texas, Florida, New York and New Jersey, had already shown that the longer children learn through their mother tongue (mainly Spanish in the 51 schools they followed for 7 years), the better they do at science, maths and also at 2^nd and 3^rd languages. Similar studies in Mali, Mozambique ¹⁹ , Haiti ²⁰ , Zambia, Malawi, Guatemala, Nigeria ²¹ and Papua New Guinea have all given similar results. The studies by Jim Cummins ²² provide the theoretical framework for understanding all these studies. He found that children have two rather distinct language capacities, one he names Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) which you can acquire in a language that is not your own, and the other, Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) which is badly stunted if you are taught through a language that is not your own. His study, together with those of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas ²³ indicates that it takes some 7 years post-secondary education in order to attempt to catch up what has been lost.

The ADEA document has now come up with similar results after studying 25 African countries. The authors maintain that it is essential that at least 6 years be in the mother tongue if academic success in foreign languages is to be obtained. Even in optimal conditions (which we don’t really have in Mauritius), they estimate that it takes 6 to 8 years of the study of, say, English or French, for a child to be equipped to learn any other subject through the medium of these languages. They are in favour of the use of the mother tongue in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Optimal results are obtained, they say, from the exclusive use of the mother tongue as medium for the first years and for as long as possible. As late as possible a foreign language can be introduced as medium, but even then, preferably only for a few subjects. Mother tongue medium, they believe, is beneficial throughout an educational system.

Genocide

All pedagogues now agree that in Mauritius the schools are not only harming children emotionally by suppressing the mother-tongue, but are also doing serious “mental harm” to the children, that is to say, interfering with the children’s capacity to reason and understand. Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ²⁴ states that if a State inflicts “serious mental harm” on a people (defined linguistically) that this, just as physical extermination of a people on the basis of language, amounts to genocide. In Mauritius it is Kreolophone and Bhojpuriphone peoples that are being made to suffer “serious mental harm” as a result of their mother tongue.

There is a second way in which the UN Convention defines linguistic genocide. If a State, through its education system for example, attempts to “empty” a whole linguistic category by forcing them to abandon their mother tongue in practice, and ends up placing them into a different linguistic group. Here the Government is emptying the peoples defined as being Kreolophone or Bhojpuriphone, and converting them, by means of the education system, into Francophone and Anglophone people. LPT had already written a letter to the previous Education Minister, Steeve Obeegadoo ²⁵ on this issue, accusing the government of genocide, and now with the PT-PMXD government continuing in the same vein, LPT has written to the new Minister.

In addition, the Mauritian State is a signatory to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 29 (a) of the Convention states that education must aim to “develop the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical capacities to his or her full potential” ²⁶. The Mauritian educational system certainly falls gravely short of this.

However, in the Concluding Observations (commonly called COBS) of the UN Human Rights Committee under the Civil and Political Rights Convention, the Mauritian State was congratulated (rather too generously, it could be said) for taking measures to ensure a certain measure of written Kreol in schools ²⁷. But so little has been done, and even less is being done.

Reform

It is true that some Education Ministers (especially Pillay and Obeegadoo) tried to introduce certain reforms. The Governments that they were in certainly lacked any political will, and their attempts to change education in a fundamental way, failed. Steeve Obeegadoo tried to decrease competition by assuring all children a place in a secondary school until the age of 16, but the plan was so timid, on the one hand, and did not repose on a mobilization around a program, on the other, that it probably permitted the reaction that we see in the “Gokhool Plan”.

Today the education system is now coming under increasing criticism. Its weaknesses are being increasingly exposed for all to see. Its examination system, still run in the colonial way through Cambridge, has been criticized ²⁸. There are criticisms from all sides. Even the Catholic Church, that had had a whole history of elitist and “specific” education is today criticizing the excessive competition in education, taking up the education of those who have failed the CPE, and more recently beginning to defy the Government’s language policy. They have in fact introduced Kreol in classes of many of their Prevok schools. Recently Bishop Maurice Piat said: “When a child hears his mother tongue in school, he gets the wonderful feeling of welcome and of recognition of who he is.”²⁹ According to a Bureau d’Education Catholique (BEC) study, there are indications that children studying in the mother tongue are making better progress than those who do not. ³⁰ .

Some Unions in the teaching sector have also taken a position in favour of better education. It is true that teachers have an important role to play in the process of changing the education system. It is of concern, however, that at present nearly all the teachers’ unions have limited their thinking and actions to very narrowly defined issues of work conditions and respect for acquired rights, which, important as they are, should not mean any neglect for their role in proposing changes in the education system as a whole. At the same time as struggling for better work conditions, it is necessary for them to discuss the content of education being offered, the medium used, the punitive methods still resorted to. When unions come forward with ideas for improving education, then we can expect to see parents supporting them in their struggle for better work conditions. The alliance becomes a natural one. In France, the education unions have a long history of fine contribution towards the thinking on the education system ³¹.

There are also editorialists ³² , academics and pedagogues ³³ who agree on the necessity of developing a new vision of education for the Republic of Mauritius, one that responds to the needs of the modern age as well as being in the interests of the pupils.

And this is what Lalit has always stood for, too.

And we regret hearing some parents in these times saying “I want a good school for my child!” when it would be so much healthier to hear the same parent say (as all parents in some epochs do say): “I want to help raise the standard of the school in our neighbourhood.” In some times of history, especially those where there are more mass movements, parents express hope for better schools for everyone in the country, and in really big movements, for everyone in the whole world.